Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7 Now Generally Available

New director eases deployment and management of day-to-day operations for users

RALEIGH, N.C.
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August 5, 2015
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7, featuring a new deployment and management tool that simplifies installation, eases day-to-day management tasks, and establishes the underpinnings for orchestrated live system updates and upgrades for subsequent releases.

"It's been nearly a year since the announcement of Unified Computing System Integrated Infrastructure for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (UCSO). Customers are dramatically simplifying and accelerating their OpenStack deployments using Cisco UCS® and UCS Service Profiles and experiencing time-to-delivery of new cloud services and applications much faster. As a testament to our strong collaboration in engineering and development, the new functionality in Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7 announced today will also be immediately available on Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure.”

Based on the OpenStackcommunity “Kilo” release, Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform is a co-engineered solution that starts with the proven and trusted foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and integrates with Red Hat’s OpenStack technology to form a production-ready cloud platform. This combination addresses the critical dependencies OpenStack has on Linux and provides a highly scalable, fault-tolerant platform for building private or public clouds. Originally launched in 2013, this new release is Red Hat’s fifth iteration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, which has been successfully deployed worldwide by customers in key verticals including public sector, financial, telecommunications, and education. Version 7 includes several new features aimed at accelerating the adoption of OpenStack including:

Simplified deployment and management - Cloud operators now have a simpler means of day-to-day operation management and resource provisioning, using the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform director. It offers a simplified and automated cloud installation tool with system-wide health checking for a proper deployment. Additionally it eases daily operational management and resource provisioning for cloud operators, including an automated “ready-state” provisioning of bare-metal resources to simplify the deployment and repurposing of hardware resources on an on-demand basis. Based on the community-driven OpenStack management project TripleO, the new director combines multiple technologies to offer a single powerful tool which also establishes a new framework that can be used for live orchestrated OpenStack and director upgrades for version 7 and subsequent releases.

Traditional workloads requiring high availability on OpenStack - Making it easier to migrate traditional, business-critical applications that require high availability to OpenStack, Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7 introduces compute host node high availability through integrated, automated monitoring and failover services from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This new capability monitors host nodes and includes the ability to automatically evacuate virtual machines from hosts, restarting workloads on alternate, available hosts.

Greater security control - Telco customers now have greater granularity and control over network traffic ports at the virtual machine level. This allows customers to maintain a tightened security level over the greater OpenStack cloud, while allowing virtualized network function (VNF) traffic through each virtual machine, as necessary. Version 7 introduces this via the Neutron modular layer 2 (ML2) and Open vSwitch (OVS) port security mechanisms included in the community Kilo release.

Network flexibility - New Neutron networking features offer greater flexibility and improved network redundancy. Network operators can benefit from several IPv6 enhancements, including the ability to support direct network routing between tenants and the external gateway. In addition, version 7 expands the high availability for Neutron routers and improves the monitoring and reporting of the router to help network operators maintain uptime.

Incremental Backup - Storage administrators can now benefit from faster block storage backups and reduced capacity needs with support for snapshot-based backups. With added support for NFS and POSIX file system types, this significantly reduces the amount of storage and time required, by backing up only the incremental changes since the last full state backup.

"We have raised the standard for production-ready OpenStack with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7. With increased adoption of OpenStack, we are excited about addressing the need for reduced time to solution with a truly open approach that enables automated deployment and lifecycle management of the infrastructure."

Jim Ganthier, vice president and general manager of Engineered Solutions and Cloud, Dell

“Enterprise customers today are consistently faced with escalating requirements and less resources. Customers are looking for ways to reallocate the time and costs spent on cloud deployment and operations today to strategic, business outcome producing projects tomorrow. The release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7 is the next step in offering enterprise-grade OpenStack cloud solutions that are both easier and faster to deploy and manage. At Dell, we are pleased to continue our work with Red Hat on co-engineered reference architectures, and look forward to jointly offering an even simpler, faster and more cost effective path to an enterprise-ready OpenStack cloud.”

“It’s been nearly a year since the announcement of Unified Computing System Integrated Infrastructure for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (UCSO). Customers are dramatically simplifying and accelerating their OpenStack deployments using Cisco UCS® and UCS Service Profiles and experiencing time-to-delivery of new cloud services and applications much faster. As a testament to our strong collaboration in engineering and development, the new functionality in Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7 announced today will also be immediately available on Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure.”

Mauri Whalen, vice president, Software and Services Group and director of Core System Development, Intel Corporation

“The enterprise data center is being redefined by increasing customer demands and advances in technology, coupled with the growth of cloud-based solutions and the move to a software defined infrastructure (SDI). Working together with Red Hat on the "On-Ramp to Enterprise OpenStack" program has helped Intel build a solid base of co-engineered, OpenStack deployments for broad adoption by enterprises.”

About Red Hat

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.

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In short

Red Hat today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7, featuring a new deployment and management tool that simplifies installation, eases day-to-day management tasks, and establishes the underpinnings for orchestrated live system updates and upgrades for subsequent releases.

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